Christie Blatchford, columnist for the National Post, has -30- tattooed on her left breast. (For the enlightenment of young journalists who may not get the reference: -30- is old-school shorthand for The End, what we used to put at the bottom of our stories. Also, the title of a nifty 1959 film noir-ish movie starring Jack Webb as the night shift editor of a fictional Los Angeles paper.)

I have the Star tattooed on my arse — metaphorically.

Perhaps dames in this business feel more passionately about newspapers.

(As an aside, I pity the Times reporter assigned to cover this event. Can only imagine how many editors scrutinized her copy before it was published.)

Industry rumours have been flying about why Abramson got canned after just three years at the helm — disputes over salary, entrenched sexism, her purported leadership failures in the newsroom — to the extent that publisher Arthur (Pinch) Sulzberger Jr. has found it necessary to issue a flurry of clarifying (muddling) statements.

Among the allegations that have made their way into print/web/Twitter in recent days is that the Times was unhappy with the pace at which the paper was moving on the digital front. That was one of the criticisms contained in an internal 96-page report prepared by Sulzberger’s son, Gregg, a reporter on the paper’s Metro desk, tagged to head what became the Newsroom Innovation Team.

Newspapers love innovation teams. I was once on the Star’s Comics Page innovation team, which is (understandably) as close as this paper would ever let me get to management decisions.

Anyway, that particular whinge against Abramson is bollocks. The Times has 800,000 digital-only subscriptions, the vast majority acquired on Abramson’s watch.

Segue here.

This affords me the opportunity to yet again grumble about digital news platforms. And I hate that word: platforms. Platforms are really ugly stacked-sole shoes, a.k.a. disco boots, especially beloved by glitter-rock bands. Just as I loathe being called a “content-provider.”

Digital is where most of the news media money is going these days so that you can absorb and interface with your minute-to-minute information spew. Latterly, and laggardly, newspapers have also discovered Twitter, steno-style dispatches that are in fact primarily a revenue tool. Tweets are often embedded in stories along with all of the other drill-down distractions that clutter up an online page.

We have become obsessed with twittering as an expand-your-brand device. I am not a brand. But if I were a brand I’d prefer to be Prada.

Further, I would like to note here that the value of Twitter shares dropped 27 per cent in the first quarter of 2014 and have plunged 50 per cent this year as slowing user growth arouses Wall Street skepticism about the company’s business model. T. Rowe Price Group Inc., the mutual fund company that was one of the biggest investors in Twitter, has just dropped a quarter of its stake — selling 4.65 million shares, according to a May 15 regulatory filing.

Twitter as social media sweetie — despite its vileness — is entering its own Ice Age, about to drop into a tar pit.

As a reporter, I bump into Twitter most often whilst covering sports.

Segue here.

The other night, in the press box at the Bell Centre for Game 2 of the Eastern Conference final between Montreal and the Rangers, I became alarmed when the guy sitting next to me began chortling as he typed. This is always a bad sign. It means somebody is either relishing a little scoop or he’s just impressed himself by banging off a good line.

This particular guy was Cathal Kelly, my brilliant and riotously funny co-worker until a few weeks ago when he turned his coat and went to some other paper, for which I may never forgive him. Sliding my eyes to catch a peek of his prose, I was relieved to see that he wasn’t writing a column, merely tweeting. Nothing to worry about there — just more yips blasted into the Twittersphere. Cathal’s column had been filed hours earlier because deadlines are not kind to that other paper.

Segue here.

Deadlines, the beast of them, are what so often cause multi-tasking journalists to make stupid mistakes. I know from stupid mistakes, clumsy fingers and the sad passing of second “eyes-on” copy editors as their breed is drummed out of newsrooms. There's no time to fact-check when you've got to get the damn game-over story in right at the buzzer. Which is why, somehow, my attempt to tap out Rick Nash's goal with 1:02 left in the first period turned into, in the paper, 12 seconds left in the opening period. Really, the only genuine usefulness of the online Star is that — bolting upright in bed at 3 o'clock in the morning, suddenly recalling a mistaken fact or idiotic blooper (funny how these things come to you at the very edge of falling asleep) — I can call the web desk and have it corrected ASAP.

Segue here.

Given my endlessly stated aversion for Twitter, I should know better than to incorporate any dope that appears on that forum into my stories. In a column last week after Milan Lucic got all gonna-kill-you-next-year loco with Dale Weise during the traditional handshake line between Montreal and Boston at the end of their playoff series, I regrettably included the tweet-thread background. One of those, from a Vancouver sportswriter, claimed that Jarome Iginla had brought up his teammate’s rear apologetically: “Sorry about my friend ...”

See, I’d forgotten that sports scribblers who tweet seem to think they’re stand-up comedians. Because Twitter is all about the snark.

While nobody, to my knowledge, requested a correction, I’m giving it, because Iginla is a quality guy and shouldn’t have been looped into the incident.

Actually, upon discovery of my blunder I was more amused than annoyed. The correction my managing editor, Jane Davenport, suggested: “In fact, the author of the Tweet was merely making a funny joke at Lucic’s expense. Good one @BrownieScott. The Star regrets Lucic, Twitter and this entire episode.”

But the paper’s Public Editor — who just a few days ago devoted her entire column to a photo cutline that confused magnolia flowers with cherry blossoms — does not think that humour is the proper tone for “Corrections.” God forbid the Star should take an error lightly.

And I do not. So this is it, in my own column, which is the best venue for it anyway.

I will conclude with a few of my favorite newspaper corrections.

From the New York Times: “An earlier version of this article misidentified the number of years E.B. White wrote for The New Yorker. It was five decades, not centuries.”

From the Ottawa Citizen: “The Earth orbits the Sun not the moon. Incorrect information appeared in a story on Page A1.”

From The Morning Bulletin, in Australia, in an article describing damage from a river flood: “There was an error printed in a story titled ‘Pigs float down the Dawson on Page 11 of yesterday’s Bully. The story said ... more than 30,000 pigs were floating down the Dawson River. What Baralaba piggery owner Sid Everingham actually said was ‘30 sows and pigs’, not 30,000.”

The Bully regrets the error.

Regrets, I’ve had a few.

Segue here ... to a horizontal position.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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